A commentary titled “‘Just don’t panic – also about climate change’” by Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt appearing at German site achgut.com tells us there’s no need for panic with respect to climate change, as leading scientists dial back earlier doomsday projections.
No warming until 2050
Vahrenholt claims a negative Atlantic oscillation is ahead of us and the expected second weak solar cycle in succession will reduce anthropogenic warming in the next 15-30 years.
He cites a recent publication by Judith Curry, who sees a pause in the temperature rise until 2050 as the most likely scenario.
Vahrenholt and Curry are not alone when it comes to believing natural-variability-watered-down warming is in the works.
Also, IPCC heavyweight Jochem Marotzke from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg takes a similar stand in a publication in the Environmental Research Letters.
In the paper, Marotzke concludes that all locations examined show “a cooling trend or lack of warming trend” and that there is “no warming due to natural cooling effects” and that in calculations up to 2049.
The researchers find “a large part of the earth will not warm up because of internal variability.”
Distancing from alarmists Schellnhuber, Rahmstorf
And recently The Max Planck Institute Director Marotzke said in an interview with Andreas Frey of the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung (FAZ) that there was no need to panic, thus clearly splitting from the doomsday scenarios put out by his alarmist colleagues Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber and Stefan Rahmstorf.
In the FAZ interview, Marotzke also said there was no need to worry that the port city of Hamburg would be flooded in 2100: “Hamburg will not be threatened, that is totally clear.”
Areas not going to be wiped out
Marotzke then told the FAZ that the fears that children have today for the future are not absolutely well-founded, and that entire areas are not going to be wiped out, as often suggested by alarmists.
Sensational French models
When asked why the French issued a press release warning of worse than expected warming, Marotzke said: “We thought, my God, what are you doing? Because it is very unlikely that the true climate is as sensitive as shown in the new models.”
When asked by the FAZ why the French had put out such dramatic numbers, Marotzke said: “I don’t know,” adding that the climate models are highly complex. “Too many calculation steps overlap, and sometimes we ourselves are amazed at what we do not understand.”
Speaking up against alarmist models
Vahrenholt summarizes the growing doubt by scientists such as Curry and Marotzke over the use of alarmist models:
One gets the impression someone is speaking out against the alarmist use of models. Perhaps Jochem Marotzke is aware that with the warming coming to an end in the next 30 years, model alarmists (Schellnhuber: “We only have 10 years left“) will have unpleasant questions to answer.
When society realizes that the climate modelers have exaggerated in order to make a political difference, we will know who misled the politicians.”
h/t Rúnar O.
Read more at No Tricks Zone
More than a century ago commodity speculators in England noticed a correlation between some crop yields and sunspot activity. That correlation was consistent enough to attract hedging and speculating. While correlation does not necessarily imply causation, it was also not unreasonable to suspect that varying sun activity may have perhaps had some impact on crop yield.
The obvious influence of cloud cover on temperature has been a concern of climatologists but direct measure of cloud cover was not even a possibility before satellites were launched. So far it has been convenient to just assume that “climate” itself was responsible for cloud cover.
However, more than two decades ago Henrik Svensmark, a Danish physicist, and his associates (an astrophysicist and an oceanographer) proposed a new climate theory which, incidentally, did not involve CO2. Svensmark claimed that both warming and cooling periods were brought on by variations in sun activity cycles. The stronger magnetic fields generated during sun spots provides a shield which reduces cosmic ray penetration into the lower atmosphere. (CERN subsequently confirmed Svensmark’s theory that cosmic rays can influence cloud cover.) Svensmark claimed that sun activity has an impact on the relatively constant stream of cosmic rays which otherwise penetrate the lower atmosphere. During periods when more cosmic rays penetrate the lower atmosphere that increase leads to cooling. Why? Because it results in more cloud cover, which causes deflection of more sun radiation back to space. The reverse is also true. When there is less penetration of cosmic rays into the lower atmosphere that leads to less cloud cover so more sun radiation reaches the earth’s surface which leads to warming. These variations in sunspot activity often occur in decade-or longer cycles.
The average level of cloud cover during one of these cycles determines whether there has been global warming or global cooling. More dramatic interpretations are that the universe controls our climate, or cloud cover determines climate. Recently (December 2019) sun activity dropped significantly. The prior low in sun activity was about 11 years earlier, in 2008, but that low was not as significant as the inactivity level beginning during 2019. If this new inactive sun cycle persists for the usual decade or more, it will result in a cyclic increase in the average cloud cover which, according to Svensmark, should result in another cooling period.
Recently Don Easterbrook, a well-known geologist, published a comprehensive study (an entire book, accessible via Amazon) which makes use of data covering the past 800,000 years. That extended duration even includes the last few ice ages. (Each ice age is now referred to as a “glaciation”, apparently because the past 65 million years shows a long-term cooling trend!) Easterbrook’s book title says it all: “The Solar Magnetic Cause of Climate Changes and Origin of the Ice Ages”.
The conclusions in Easterbrook’s book are clearly not wishy-washy. He has put his reputation on the line, probably recognizing that the usual peer-review by a like-minded scientist at the adjacent desk would end with the results being filed away in that special black hole containing all the other unmentionables.
Easterbrook’s firm conclusions (page 176) follow:
“EVERY cool period was characterized by low sunspot numbers, indicating low strength of the sun’s magnetic field, and high production rates of beryllium-10 and radiocarbon, indicating a higher intensity of cosmic rays penetrating the lower atmosphere. EVERY warm period was coincident with high sunspot numbers and low production rates of beryllium-10 and radiocarbon. Thus, it is unequivocally clear that climate changes, large and small, are driven by fluctuations of the sun’s magnetic field.”
While Easterbrook claims that his data and conclusions stand whether or not Svensmark’s theory survives, his results appear to further validate Svensmark’s theory.
Alarmists insist that neither the Medieval Warming Period nor the subsequent Little Ice Age were global events. Where is their justification? Easterbrook’s analysis implies that all prior warmings were caused by sun activity. If true, then ALL prior warmings (and coolings) were, by definition, global events. This is a clear sign that the alarmist version of climate science must be re-examined.
Even if there is no further increase in the CO2 level the alarmist theory demands that the current warming level must persist, at least until some of the CO2 is re-absorbed into the biomass. But the same suspects declare that CO2 disappearance from the atmosphere will take a very long time. There are other conflicts with the alarmist position, including a three decade cooling from 1945-1975 as CO2 continued to increase, and also the IPCC recognition of a “hiatus” in temperature during the 2000s as CO2 continued its increase.
Finally, while the year 1998 was one of the warmest years, alarmists now claim that 2016 (finally) reached a new record. While CO2 continued increasing there was no further increase in temperature for 17 years? The process of follow-up “corrections” to previously recorded temperature data brings up another suspicious issue. There has been a consistent record of biased revisions to the temperature database. Older temperature data revisions ALWAYS show more cooling, and revisions to more current data are ALWAYS biased towards more warming. EVERY revision favored the alarmist claim.
The greenhouse gas theory, apparently a substitute for actual evidence and used as justification by alarmists, must in some cases be accompanied by a necessary (but not sufficient) condition. When the GHG application involves the open atmosphere there must also be an accompanying “signature”, a warmer region about 10km above the tropics. Despite decades of radiosondes that necessary “hot spot” has never been found and it’s not a matter of missing data. Actual temperatures have been recorded both above and below 10km. The two attempts by CAGW proponents (Sherwood and Santer) claiming to explain that missing “hot spot” both ignore the existing data and further exacerbate that dubious act with speculation about what happened to the required “hot spot”. But this is no surprise. The open atmosphere is not a greenhouse. Satellites detect heat escaping to space. This fact, along with the missing “hot spot” have apparently also been filed away in that same unmentionable black hole, and not only by alarmists, but also with the concurrence of an agenda-driven major news media. Even worse, the alarmist models all assume the GHG theory is applicable without satisfying the “hotspot” requirement. This assumption permits them to claim that water vapor feedback is the ultimate culprit, causing 2 to 3 times the temperature impact as (supposedly) brought on by CO2 increase.
It is amazing that most of the major news media science writers ignore what appear to be obvious implications of Easterbrook’s study. The MWP and earlier warmings were global (and, as Phil Jones, an early proponent of anthropogenic-caused warming, has publicly stated, namely, if the MWP was global it’s a different ballgame. Jones’ uncertainty indicates that the alarmists do not have much in the way of supporting evidence.) Actually it is also not difficult these days to demonstrate from existing MWP studies (@co2science.org) that the MWP was global. The alarmists’ silly argument that the MWP warmings must be “synchronous” would also disqualify their claim that the current warming is global.
Any credible climatologist should by now feel obligated to investigate and verify or rebut Easterbrook’s data. If that data is valid the conclusions are a no-brainer. ALL prior warmings (and coolings) were brought on by sun activity so were global events. Since there is no evidence that CO2, a trace gas, has ever had any impact on our global temperature, why should we even suspect that the cause of our most recent warming, beginning in about 1975, was related to CO2 (a trace gas) increase? As pointed out earlier, correlation, particularly a cherry-picked short term duration, does not imply causation. The GHG theory, insofar as its applicability to the open atmosphere, is clearly not settled.
Increasing CO2 level remains an important concern but that is likely unrelated to warming or cooling, so also unrelated to various other events, all supposedly brought on by increasing temperature, such as sea level rise, hurricanes, tornados, droughts, floods, or your grandpa’s arthritis. Claims that sea level rise is caused by human activity is laughable, given that the sea level has risen over 400 feet since the last glaciation began melting and during the last century (during human supposed involvement) the total sea level rise has been a few inches! It is much more rational to assume the last few inches are a continuation of whatever caused the first 400 feet of rise.
It appears that it is the cosmos, rather than human activity, which remains in charge of our climate. CO2 concern is best left to such disciplines as health researchers and botanists rather than climatologists.
There are politicians, Hollywood types, school children, and even some researchers who are becoming even more strident in their calls for wrecking the world economy by getting rid of energy from ‘fossil fuels’. They may come to regret it.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
(Copy and paste the first line into any search engine – the poem makes an interesting read – especially the verse about religion.)
They have had Warming and Cooling periods in the past its just today we have power and money hungry politicians and Eco-Freaks who want t o change the world for the worst